The Lobato symptom: no one tames the PSOE of Madrid | Madrid News

“They want me like this, without fangs.” Ángel Gabilondo, the man Ciudadanos prevented from governing Madrid with the PSOE in 2019, explained with that metaphor why his slow style had a pull among voters. Two years later, in 2021, with the Isabel Díaz Ayuso (PP) phenomenon in full swing, Juan Lobato, her replacement as regional candidate, offered the opposite recipe: “We have to have a much higher forcefulness.” With the two now gone from the political front line, the contrast of their strategies, which also ended up being convergent in moderation, reflects the constant changes of script in the Madrid PSOE. In the last decade, the party has accumulated five general secretaries (Tomás Gómez, Sara Hernández, José Manuel Franco, Lobato and whoever is chosen now), in addition to four managers. Also, six spokespersons in the Assembly (Gómez, Franco, Gabilondo, Hana Jalloul, Lobato, and now Jesús Celada). And three candidates for mayor of the capital (Antonio Miguel Carmona, Pepu Hernández and Reyes Maroto). A coming and going that will continue now with the foreseeable landing of Minister Óscar López, and that reflects that no one manages to tame the PSOE in Madrid.

“These are very difficult days, once again, because unfortunately the Madrid federation has been in turmoil for a long time,” describes a socialist mayor. “What needs to be done is to let a project, some teams, come to fruition in Madrid,” he claims. “That can’t be done in four years,” he diagnoses. “You cannot have convulsions every four years, and have the primaries be a political war instead of a celebration of democracy.”

Those three phrases touch all the keys of the emotional anguish and internal tension that mark the daily life of the PSOE of Madrid so far in the 21st century. The party has never recovered from Tamayazothe betrayal of two socialist deputies (Eduardo Tamayo and María Teresa Sáez) who prevented Rafael Simancas’ PSOE from governing in 2003. With that wound always open, since it made it easier for the PP to maintain the helm of the region for more than 25 consecutive years , the second decade of the century led to another that still festers: in 2019, the socialists won the regional elections for the first time since 1987, but Ciudadanos prevented them from governing by preferring to ally themselves with the PP.

In between, before and now, the changes of candidates and leaders have been constant, and the internal struggles have been bloody. That is why Ferraz’s federal leadership now hopes that Lobato’s replacement is achieved through a single candidacy headed by Minister López. A manager dominated by people close to Pedro Sánchez will be responsible for ensuring that the transition is peaceful, and which in turn represents in part the thousand souls of the regional PSOE to dominate: the simanquist (with Isaura Leal); that of the mayors of the red belt (with representatives of the councilors of Getafe and Alcorcón); that of the Henares corridor; or that of Madrid city (with the former regional general secretary and former government delegate José Manuel Franco).

“On Friday, at the end of Isaura’s speech at a meeting between the manager and delegates, people stood up to applaud. “Everyone, from all families,” they say in the Madrid PSOE delegation that attended the 41st Federal Congress in Seville. “Isaura had called for unity, she remembered that we all need each other, and also the importance of Madrid,” they add. “People are still in a state of shock and perplexity,” they close on the departure of Lobato, who resigned after revealing Abc who went to the notary to record an exchange of messages with a Moncloa official, Pilar Sánchez Acera, in which she was sent an email related to the case of Isabel Díaz Ayuso’s partner. A symptom of distrust towards his own initials that has cost the position of a politician who had barely been at the head of the PSOE in Madrid for three years. For one reason or another, no one sits at the head of this federation.

Elvira Lindo, they remember in the PSOE, once wrote an article in EL PAÍS titled Rare Animal. It was 2010, and the socialists of Madrid were facing a new change of electoral poster.

“I read conscientiously, with a desire to understand, a laborious report that was published about the different socialist families of Madrid and I ended up with a drowsy head: the Acostistas, the guerristas, the… I didn’t get to know what each one was after. group, except, of course, power,” he wrote. Now the internal consensus is that the problem has not been the divisions, but rather an unforced error by Lobato, although Sánchez’s team had already taken him to task for breaking away from key government proposals or even proposing a horizon without the president at the helm. of the party, and replaced by a woman. Hence, the possible landing of Minister López had been leaked before the controversy broke out due to which the now former Secretary General of Madrid resigned. The conclusion, in both cases, is the same: another project that remains halfway.

“Changing horses so much is not intelligent, it is even suicidal, there is an example of the patience that the PP had with Alberto Ruiz-Gallardón and José María Álvarez del Manzano… but the changes do not explain everything either,” argues a politician. who knows well the ins and outs of the Madrid federation. “Either we take care of understanding the society in which we live, without a priori, or we understand how the right and the extreme right can penetrate places that had a working-class tradition, or the candidate does not matter,” he continues, sharing Lobato’s analysis that The PSOE had to season its social democratic discourse in Madrid with modern nods to the center. “And that is why, by himself, Oscar López will not solve this.”

An opinion that is not shared by a significant source in the delegation sent by Madrid to the PSOE congress in Seville, where it is assumed that the minister, in addition to regional general secretary, will be a candidate for the 2027 regional elections: “Basically, López contributes Government experience and organic experience, closeness to the president of the government, as chief of staff and then as minister, which in turn gives him knowledge of the party, knowledge of the institutions…”

But reaching power in Madrid, where the socialists have not governed since the four-year period 1991-1995, seems as distant as ever: Díaz Ayuso and José Luis Martínez Almeida, the two candidates whom Pablo Casado chose in 2019 thinking about an electoral setback, They already enjoy a comfortable absolute majority. And now the PSOE has a competitor on the left that it did not have before: Más Madrid, which leads the opposition in the Assembly and in the City Council of the capital.

“Now it is going to cost us,” acknowledges a source who knows the strategy for the first steps of the new stage. “But for the elections [de 2027] more than two years left. We have to integrate everyone. If you try to ignore someone, things will go badly for you in Madrid,” he diagnoses. “If there is a good opposition, we can recover ground,” he bets.

For now, and after Lobato’s departure, Jesús Celada will temporarily occupy the position of spokesperson in the Assembly. With him at the helm, the PSOE will experience a period of transition, since the final election will have to wait for the arrival of López, who will seek, says a socialist source, “absolute harmony” with his counterpart in the regional Parliament. The reason is simple: it will be his voice against Ayuso, since the minister is not a regional deputy, and could not face the president in the Assembly every week. Waiting to see if he settles or not, Celada has made the sixth change of spokesperson in ten years. The symptom that until now no one has been able to tame the PSOE in Madrid.